


the only thing left out in the light

by buttface



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Mythology/Religion, Canon Compliant, Canonical Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, Crisis of Faith, Flashbacks, Funerary Practices In Space, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Grief/Mourning, I'm serious if you haven't read that far don't even read the summary, M/M, Memories, Other Lost Light, Past Drug Addiction, Sad Ending, Spoilers up to MTMTE 32, is it love or is it residual matrix radiation, let's make everyone sad while canon's not looking, neither it's addiction displacement, not exactly but close enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-15 20:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21259184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttface/pseuds/buttface
Summary: The teachings say:The dead stay with us. Their voices resonate in our sparks, the light they give off travels on. Stars can be seen from across the galaxy thousands of years after they die, and we will be the same, so long as those we knew carry us with them.No-one who is loved is ever lost.*After Rodimus dies fighting the Sparkeater, Drift tries to make sense of everything that's happened. Faith, love, redemption: it's hard to tell the difference sometimes. A tale of the other Lost Light.





	the only thing left out in the light

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as me thinking "Gee, we don't spend enough time being sad that there was a Drift who had to perform Rodimus's funeral" and quickly spiraled into trying to invent Spectralism. It's not _exactly_ romance, because they never had a chance to become romance, but it's not _not_ romance.
> 
> I've marked it as Teen and Up because it's fundamentally about death, but it's not particularly graphic or at all spicy. The past drug addiction is Drift's canonical drug use. It *is* the other Lost Light though, and if you don't know what that means you should probably stop now.
> 
> Title is from Stevie Nicks' "Rooms On Fire" because this is how I name things and while I failed to put together an actual playlist, I did form a strong association between Drift and Stevie Nicks. He has crystal visions, you know. And I guess he did keep that one vision to himself.
> 
> I owe my life to Cee @Veto_power_over_clocks who insisted on being credited as "the poor sap that beta read this" and to everyone on driftrod twitter for supporting/putting up with me through me pouring my heart into this.

_Well maybe I'm just thinking that the rooms are all on fire_  
_Every time that you walk in the room_  
_Well there is magic all around you, if I do say so myself_  
_I have known this much longer than I've known you_

Drift remembers vividly the moment the quest first felt real. 

(It means nothing that he remembers. It was barely a few days ago. He would rather be able to forget the last few days for a moment, to not have the same memories playing permanently on repeat, but every time he shuts down that process, it immediately pops up again. He has to make peace with it, he knows. Embrace the spectrum. Let every shade pass through you. It’s not supposed to be _easy_.)

“Look at them,” Rodimus had said to him, gesturing from the balcony to the crowd gathering below them. The awe in his voice resonated at what felt like the same frequency as Drift’s spark. “Look at all of them! They’re here! They came! They’re really coming with us. With _us_. We’re really doing this, Drift.” He grinned, and his smile was a burning light. Drift could have followed it home from across the universe.

(He never got the chance.)

“I knew the speech you wrote was good, but I never expected…” His joy had been so warm and contagious. Bright warm red, dancing yellow. The holiest blue of the hottest stars. “It’s going to be amazing.”

The vibrations in his words, making every molecule in Drift’s body tremble. That’s all warmth is. We share our harmonies, we share our warmth, against the cold and the dark. Until we are one again.

“It wasn’t my words on a datapad that brought them here, Rodimus,” he'd said, and he can still feel the unforced smile he'd had, the feeling of everything finally sliding into place.

“It’s your vision. I’m just the pretty face.”

And maybe that was all true in the most literal sense, but it couldn’t have been anyone else that brought them all together. Drift had known that as soon as he came back to himself after Vector Sigma. Drift knew a few things about what promises would appeal to the desperate spark, but it was Rodimus who made them sound real.

They would show the doubters. Everyone who’d believed the Knights were a myth. Everyone who’d thought Rodimus was just storming off out of petulance. Drift knows better. Living in the Dead End was a crash course in assessing people; either you learned fast or you died quickly. Rodimus is impulsive, quick to judge and quick to talk back, energy radiating off him in every spectrum, but he’s always honest.

(Was. He _was _always honest. The tense is going to take some practice.)

  


* * *

  


There was a golden age once, everyone says. But all they know is there’s never been a golden age for them.

Rodimus had been waiting there to see Drift when he woke up, the hole through his chest plating and out the other side still covered by a temporary patch. He remembers how his spark flared at seeing that smile, overlapping with the vision still fresh in his working memory.

“I’m sorry-” he’d blurted out at the same time that Rodimus tried to say something like “Welcome back,” and Rodimus burst into laughter so bright and genuine that he almost didn’t mind not getting to hear the greeting. He’d never seen someone smile at him coming online before.

(Not quite true. Ratchet had given him a satisfied smirk that first time in the clinic, when he’d rescued him from a booster crash. The _first_ time, anyway. But it didn’t feel the same, and it especially doesn’t feel the same now. Memories don’t stay static, no matter how many details we store; they’re always refracted through what we know now, what happened after.)

“Better than you have tried to kill me and failed,” Rodimus teased, gesturing to slap him on the back and thinking better of it, only resting his hand nearby instead. 

Drift thought of Deadlock, of everything wrong with him inside that had left him vulnerable to D-Void's control when all the real Autobots around him remained unaffected, and said nothing.

“Water under the bridge, anyway. If we had water. Or bridges, anymore. Speaking of which…” 

He’s glad it was Rodimus who broke the news to him about Cybertron being rebooted. He’s not sure who else would have understood how he felt. Many might mourn all that had been lost from their world; some might look at the blank slate and dream of what might come next. But Drift and Rodimus could only see the inevitability of a new Dead End, another Nyon.

There’d never been a place for either of them, even in peace. Rodimus had his band of insurgents, he’d always been a leader and could be again in better times too; but the only talent Drift had ever found was violence. He could hope this time around it wouldn’t be as useful a gift, but where does that leave him? Back in the gutters?

And the Neutrals returning, after so long. The surest sign the war really was over. What would they think? Drift had believed once upon a time that there would be a better world once the war was over, and all of it would have been worth it. Instead, there’s just _less_. Less world, fewer people.

(Far fewer Neutrals too, if they’d had resources useful to the Decepticon cause. There was no shortage of death he’d dealt to them personally. Rodimus and Kup and Perceptor might have forgiven him, but the Neutrals who couldn’t understand being in the war, who’d forgotten or never seen why they'd had to try to change things in the first place? Who only knew and hated him as Deadlock? He knows how they saw him in Crystal City, and that was even before he’d - well.)

“They blame us for everything being gone, of course. Optimus especially, even though he’s gone missing. Maybe especially because of that.” Rodimus had paced around the room, restless and agitated like a trapped beast. “It’s not like we had a better choice. But how do you explain D-Void to someone who wasn’t there? 'Sorry, we had to reboot the planet so an evil universe didn't eat everything'? It's not even plausible enough to sound fake.”

“So what is everyone doing?” He’d meant “What are _you _doing?”, because whether Rodimus was occupied was a good proxy for his well-being and because it might be a clue to what the vision had been about, but it felt too embarrassing to wake up to the reformatting of your entire planet and admit you only want to know about one bot. Even if you had a message from the divine for them. Even if it was true.

“I don’t know. Waiting, I guess. Going for each other’s throats. Trying to keep everyone from starting a new war. I don’t know what I expected winning the war to be like, but it wasn’t _this_.”

It should have felt like coming home. Whatever that felt like. Maybe they’d never know.

Dai Atlas apparently wasn’t among the returning Neutrals, or indeed anyone from the Circle of Light, so Drift had nobody to consult about the vision. He didn’t want to tell Rodimus about it until he’d gotten some advice from someone with a firmer spiritual background. What if telling him stopped it from coming true? Surely it would be enough just to guide and protect him, to make sure that he’d be ready for whatever it was?

(He should have told him. He’d wanted to, to see the realization dawn on Rodimus that something beyond either of them trusted in him. But he was so sure there would always be another chance.)

If Drift had any doubts about the vision, discovering the map inside the Matrix wiped them away. It had been there all this time without anyone knowing. Surely it had been waiting for this time, for them. For someone who would recognise what it was, and for someone ready to take a chance on it. Someone special.

It had to be a sign. This is what Rodimus was needed for. The Matrix had kept him safe for this, until the time was ready to reveal his destination. He hadn’t even needed convincing.

Rodimus came to him the first chance they had to talk alone, once there’s enough of a lull in the fighting for High Command, such as it is, to take a break. “You’re sure about the map?”

“Absolutely.” 

“Then let’s go.”

It was as simple as that.

There was no chance of Prowl giving them a ship, but Drift had a sizeable bank account he’d barely touched. He’d been saving up for something that would start to make up for all he’d done, and he would never get a better chance than this. He hadn’t spent anywhere near that much in the rest of his life put together, but it felt right. It wasn’t for him, it was for everyone else. For the lost lights he’d snuffed out.

That left Rodimus to find them a crew.

“Everyone keeps telling me it’s a waste of time,” Rodimus had groaned after coming back to their makeshift headquarters from another unsuccessful recruitment drive. “They all want to keep hanging around here to get told we were wrong by people who excused themselves from having to do anything about it the first time around. ‘It could be a new Golden Age!’ Like any of us know how to make a Golden Age. All we’re good at is making new ways to kill each other, and as of that last fight we can’t even do _that _anymore.” The scorched piece of unidentifiable Kimia rubble he’d draped himself over attested to that.

“The Knights will teach us. They’ll help us rebuild.”

There must have been a glorious past, a Golden Age, wise and skillful ancestors who could be persuaded to return at their people’s time of greatest need. Otherwise there would just be _them_, everyone who had created and fought and survived four million years of war. He knows that kind of wish doesn’t always lead to good things, but they don’t have anything else.

“What if they see what we’ve done with everything they left us, the slums and the functionism and the War and the reformatting, and decide we don’t deserve any better?” Rodimus had asked him with a smirk that didn’t reach his optics, gazing at Drift upside-down from where he’d sprawled backwards over the rubble they’d repurposed as a desk.

“They wanted us to be happy. All of us. That has to include giving us a second chance to learn and make up for it.”

"If we're the ones who find them, we can make sure it's better this time," Rodimus had said slowly, as if still trying to convince himself. (_Believe, please_, Drift tells the memory. _I need to know you believed in me, in us_.)

  


* * *

  


The teachings tell us: _Our lives will not be joy unmixed with sorrow. Nor will they be fear with no shade of hope. Compared to many of the creatures in this universe, we live for a very long time. In all that time, we will see a wide spectrum, colored with many emotions and experiences. _

_You must learn to acknowledge and accept each of these colors. This does not mean you cannot seek to change them - color is light reflected off of us into each other’s optics, and we are always a part of it - but you cannot deny them. You cannot create a world without every one of them, not even the pink of spilled energon or the gray of the dead. _

_You will see things you do not want to see. You will feel things you do not want to feel. The sooner you make your peace with this, the more you can do for those around you. Mirror their joy, share their sorrow, and be a light for when they cannot see the difference, but be sure to see every one._

  


* * *

  


They’d outlived the war. They’d outlived the peace before the war, the peace in name only, which was no less dangerous even if it was more polite. What could stop them where everything else they’d seen had failed? What could stop _him_?

“This time, nobody’s going to die. I won’t let them die,” he’d said to Drift out of nowhere as they watched the crowd swell. His optics had thrummed Matrix-blue as if he could simply will the impossible, and for that moment Drift had believed it. 

It’s not as though Rodimus didn’t know how to take things seriously. He knows (_knew_) as well as anyone how wrong everything can go. They both do, don’t they? It was _because _of that. 

None of them had ever really gotten to know how it would feel to be without the constant and immediate possibility of death. Not Rodimus, not Drift, not just about anyone else on the Lost Light. Some of the older mechs who’d had it good before the war, maybe. But Rodimus was going to try to figure it out for all of them anyway, and Drift was going to be there by his side, protecting him, making his dream (their dream) come true. 

Because he’d seen the passion in Rodimus's eyes when he said this time, he would be the one who kept everyone safe. We’re none of us what we wanted to be, he’d said, we’ve never had the chance. But what if we can make it right this time, what if the golden age _was _real, what if it could be golden for all of us --

It was the same feeling Megatron had given him, once upon a time in a slum’s dirty back alley. That things _could_ be right, even though they never had been before. This time, if the _right_ people were in charge, they could make it work. For everyone.

Rodimus came to _him_, smiled for _him_, how could he not --

So Rodimus had charged in at the first sign of danger, played the reckless hero like he had countless times before. Because someone had to, and because that someone had to be him, because … because. It wasn’t quite self-centred, and wasn’t quite selfless. It was just … Drift still struggles to explain it. Rodimus had taken this responsibility. He made a show of carrying it lightly, precisely because it wasn’t light at all. Because the alternative was drowning in the depths of everything he wanted to make up for. Because what made him strongest was being able to make decisions and act on them without hesitation, regardless of the situation. He probably hadn’t thought anything of it this time. They’d all faced far worse, what could go wrong? 

It wasn’t even the sparkeater that got him. He’d just stood too close. 

And Drift had seen it all and still been too slow to save him. 

He should have understood what Rodimus was going to do. He should have been the one Rodimus could trust to carry it out. (_My faith will protect me; give me your faith that I will protect you._) He should have been there to stand between his captain and danger, because the future needed Rodimus more than it needed Drift.

(It should have been him.)

  


* * *

  


Hot Rod had always vibrated with barely suppressed energy, as if eternally poised at the starting line, engine revving, waiting for someone to show him the finish line and fire the starting pistol. When he came back as Rodimus, frame rebuilt and colors a little more subdued, Optimus publicly praised him, saying the faith they’d always put in him had been justified, that he’d learned patience and not to rush into action alone.

Optimus hadn’t understood. The hum was still there, stronger than ever if anything. Perhaps it was just too low for Optimus to hear anymore under the roar of the Matrix. The difference was that Rodimus waited like a predator watching for the right moment to strike. He was no longer listening for someone else to fire the pistol. After all, if his reckless mission to steal back the Matrix had paid off, why should he doubt himself now?

Drift never asked him what it felt like to carry the Matrix. Everyone else must have asked him and Drift didn’t want to add to the cacophony. And he had been afraid of boring Rodimus, still one of the few people who seemed to accept his company. You can’t just ask someone to describe what it felt like to have something sacred forced into their body, anyway. He had been sure it was bound to come up naturally in conversation eventually; he could wait, and watch, and try to understand. He’s still trying to understand.

Had the Matrix blessed him then, or did it accept him because he was already blessed, chosen long before? The energy still radiated from him, mingling with his natural electricity and the simmering promise of fire in his lines, even though he’d given the Matrix itself away. 

Did he know? Could he see it himself? Did carrying the Matrix change someone forever, or is it only those who are already special that the Matrix chooses? It had been idle curiosity at the time; after the vision, Drift only had more questions. 

It wasn’t enough, whatever it was. All the old Primes had fallen, too; of course the body the Matrix built for Rodimus couldn’t be any more invulnerable than theirs. But it was never when they were only just _starting_, was it? It had been their time, they had done what they were chosen to do. That’s what everyone always said. The story reshaped itself around their falls, but Drift couldn’t tell a story that explained the Rodimus-shaped absence at its heart. 

  


* * *

  


The teachings tell us: _colors are life. When we die, we turn gray as the spark fades. We only have so long to bring color to the universe; you must be careful what colors you paint while you have the chance, to try to wash out the gray that follows after._

(It wasn’t chance enough.)

  


* * *

  


Drift had tried to cut him free of the engine. That’s what they tell him, anyway. He only remembers flashes of it. High emotion during the recording process can corrupt memory irreparably, they tell him. He remembers the continuing thrum of the engine under his fingers as he clawed at it, the cold of the sword in his hands, cutting into his fingers as he tried to use his free hand to help pull the blade down through Rodimus’s head.

He doesn’t remember what Rodimus’s face looked like, which feels like both a blessing and a betrayal. The face in the coffin has been reset to something more peaceful, the way someone had felt Rodimus should have met his death. Was he in pain? Did he have a moment to realize that this time, he wasn’t going to be able to cheat death? 

He hopes it was too quick for him to realize. He hopes Rodimus went to the Afterspark sure of his victory, sure that he had kept his crew safe this time and always would. But any clues Drift might have had, he’s lost. 

He remembers, too, the crunch of plating under his hands and feet as he tried to fight off the crew who were trying to drag him away. He’d felt so sure that it had to be him, he owed him this much, he was supposed to be Rodimus’s right hand, his knight until they could find the true Knights. He should be the one to shoulder this burden, even if his optics were blurred and his hands unsteady.

It was Ratchet who had finally gotten him to let go. “Let me do it. Only a hot scalpel can do the job cleanly,” he’d said, sounding either compassionate or disgusted at Drift making a mess of his far-more-than-second second chance once again. (He remembers it both ways, a double-memory of discordant sounds, two colors overlaid slightly offset. One version or the other is clearer each time he loops it, depending on how he's feeling.) 

Ratchet had been right. The edge on the corpse in the coffin is clean and even, apart from the burrs at the top that marked where Drift had tried to hack him away. Ratchet had done a beautiful job.

Rodimus hasn’t even finished fading when Drift first lays him into the coffin in progress. Color is life is color. It would be easy to believe he’s still holding fiercely onto life - it’s hardly the first time he’d cheated death, after all - if not for the glaring absence of most of his brain module. Drift forces himself to look at it, at the delicate exposed mechanisms, at everything that was left of Primus’s chosen, at the fading of the brightest light he’d ever met. He has to see it, to accept it. Even if it never makes sense, even if it doesn’t seem possible, it’s the truth.

  


* * *

  


"Who do you want to hear about today?"

Drift had smiled as always, trying to radiate peace. It had been a bit of a reflex at that point, trying to seem calm and nonthreatening, even if he’d never really needed it around Hot Rod. "Nyon was _your _home, Hot Rod. I only know the people you've told me about, remember?"

(Hot Rod, not Rodimus. He was still Hot Rod then. Drift is never sure how to think of him now in memories from that time, whether Rodimus is the title that came with the new frame and the residual Matrix glow, the honor bestowed on one who could have been Prime, or the potential that always waited inside him. He knows what Opti- what _Orion_ would say, but his relationship with the Matrix always seemed different from Rodimus’s. Perhaps it doesn’t matter now.

“Hot Rod”, then, for the sake of fidelity to the memory as it was stored, but with the echo of “Rodimus” underneath. They both resonate the same for him.)

Hot Rod had sighed. "Yeah, I know. I just… what about all the people I didn't know either? Who tells _their_ story?"

"It's more helpful to do what you can do, rather than worry about what you can't."

"I don't _want_ there to be anything I can't do," Hot Rod had sulked, and Drift would have laughed if it hadn’t felt unkind to the lost dead of Nyon.

"Then we can do some sparring afterwards, if you like, and you can show me what you can do. For now, why don’t you tell me about someone who was there when you showed Orion Pax the energon tanks."

These were some of Drift's favorite memories. He’d never seen Nyon - he hadn’t travelled much around Cybertron before Megatron had found him, and everything had escalated too quickly after that - but listening to Hot Rod’s stories he feels like he knew it, at least a little. 

Hot Rod was never the sort for meditation. He probably never would have been, even if … even if he’d had more time to try it. Asking him to be still felt like asking him to stop being himself. But he’d taken an interest in Drift’s practices and after repeated sessions had not made Hot Rod any less prone to fidgeting and grimaces Drift had come up with a modified methodology.

So when regret caught up to him, Hot Rod knocked on Drift’s door and told him a story about someone from Nyon. Drift guided him a little, but it never took much. Hot Rod was a natural storyteller with an intuition for people and his fondness for those he’d seen as under his care rose to the surface easily. Drift just tried to nudge him towards interpretations that allowed him to make peace. Treasuring each memory, who they were and the time they’d shared, the echoes they left behind, and recognizing that what he’d done was out of love for them. Taken one at a time it didn’t seem so impossible.

“It does help,” Hot Rod had admitted to him once after a particularly draining session. “You must have practiced this sort of thing a lot.”

“I certainly have killed a lot of non-combatants,” Drift had replied dryly.

“Primus! You’re awful, Drift. We’re both awful. It’s a good thing we found each other.”

Drift never told him he hadn’t done anything like this for the deaths on his conscience. He doesn’t even remember their faces.

  


* * *

  


The teachings tell us: _Color and sound and warmth and motion are all part of the Great Wavelength. We think of these things as distinct because our senses are limited; each sense only perceives part of the whole. We place too much importance on the medium and the frequency and not the underlying truth that all are one._

_For as long as we live, we resonate, and even after we are gone, we echo. We mourn those who die because we cannot perceive that they have simply moved along the wavelength; they are still with us, resonating. They are not lost, they have not disappeared. Someday, we will sense them again._

  


* * *

  


The thing is--

The thing about religions after four million years of war is that they get fragmented, if not lost altogether. You can't just go to a temple and ask for a priest who can teach you a mantra or initiate you into the mysteries. The temples were some of the war's first targets, in accordance with Megatron's playbook. Drift had razed plenty of them personally, washed the remains of consecrated stone from between his plates countless times.

Not that religion had ceased to exist, despite Megatron's efforts. But the casual believers who might once have supported a priestly class had become scarce. When faced with something like four million years of galaxy-spanning violence, most either become fiercely devout, even fanatical, or give up entirely on hoping for anything better than the empirically observable carnage.

Ratchet was among the latter, of course. “The things I’ve seen mechs do to each other, the twisted piles of wreckage I’ve been asked to piece together so that they can go out and do it to each other again, why would I believe in a God? If Primus or any of them do exist, they aren’t doing any of us any favors. Until I see one of them down here with a wrench in their hand helping me fix their supposed children, I don’t care what they have to say.”

It used to be fun to tease Ratchet about that.

Rodimus was one of the few he'd ever met who still seemed casual about faith. He seemed to believe, but it was hard to imagine he’d act any different if he didn’t. Drift had looked forward to understanding that. 

So-- the thing is that Drift doesn't actually, as such, know the proper words to inscribe a coffin with. 

He knows some of the rituals for the Act of Transition. There had been a few Spectralists in Crystal City, and he’d been present for more than a few funerals during his time there. 

(_Whose fault were those?_ he can almost hear his old voice crackling in his audials, imagined fluctuations and waves in the air dutifully perceived as sound and turned into words despite not being real - but he’d done the best thing he could imagine at the time. He hopes his imagination is better now.) 

He thought he’d be able to ask the Circle of Light, but they aren’t responding to his messages.

But - yes. He’d stood at the front during Wing’s funeral, because it was the only thing that he had to offer the mech that had taught him so much, and spoken a few words of gratitude. He knows there were grumblings about it, him taking too proud a place for someone who had turned their world upside down, but it felt dishonest not to stand at the front and accept all those gazes on him. 

It was the first funeral he’d ever actually _attended_. Megatron had considered them decadent, and even Gasket had only Drift’s swift and violent revenge for commemoration. He wonders how many funerals he’s caused, and how many others died uncelebrated because there was no-one left alive to mourn.

Wing’s ceremony, he understood later, had been relatively simple. Wing had been so invested in the preservation of life that he hadn’t had much interest in the frame after death. Maybe he’d already had enough of inward focus without outward action. 

But Drift had gone to other ceremonies, as unobtrusively as he could. Had carefully collected the details, how many ways there are to try to give an individual death meaning among so many to mourn. The Neoprimalists treasure the head and cremate the body. Some mechs prefer to be returned to the body of Cybertron where they once came from, for those who were; it seems to be a bit of a touchy subject among the cold constructed, though he hears that some opt for it anyway, seeking the union they were denied in birth. Drift hasn’t spent enough time on Cybertron to know. And Spectralism opts for a festival of lights and sounds, to ease the shock of the passing into gray and the sudden silence of the deceased.

(The Festival of Lost Light. He’d thought it was an auspicious omen; he’d been half right.)

He knows that a Spectralist coffin should be made of what was around the deceased when they died. _Honor their place in the universe and the moment when they changed wavelength. Their frame is only part of the manifestation of that moment; keep with it part of the world that surrounded their last experience in that form. _This was easier said than done for the dead in Crystal City; Theophany was covered in dust and dunes, iron-rich but contaminated with organic compounds. (_Admixed_, not _contaminated_, he corrects himself. _Enriched _even, perhaps. Not much use for metallurgy, anyway.) The Spectralist dead among the Circle of Light had lain waiting for some time while the living devout processed their last surroundings into red glass tombs.

At least Rodimus had died in sheet metal. Drift wasn’t much of a glassblower.

Building the coffin brings him clarity the way the circuit boosters used to, or the voice of Megatron on the recording of Towards Peace he brought with him on campaign. It takes time, but there’s no shortage of time now. Measure, trace the crease, heat, fold. Make the image in your mind real, little by little, and by that process, make your acceptance of the event real too. Create a home for the frame, even if the deceased no longer needs it, because _you_ need it.

But he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to inscribe it with. 

He’d like to ask Cyclonus. He’d like to ask Cyclonus a lot of things; Cyclonus has firsthand knowledge of so many things Drift can only attempt to piece back together through the fog of millions of years and mass emigration. And a lot of Spectralist beliefs seemed to have been formed in response to more ascetic and physicalist traditions like Clavis Aurea. Even if they didn’t use the same rituals, surely Cyclonus could give him some insight into the background of his own traditions, and it would be _something_ at least.

But he’d tried before, when he first realized how old Cyclonus was, and Cyclonus had looked at him with a level of disgust that was new even to Drift. “I will not perform sacred rituals for your _amusement_,” he’d boomed. “My faith is not a dead thing for you to pick over for scraps the way you did my Cybertron.” 

Drift tried not to draw too many conclusions from the fact that the only crew member old enough to have insight into their quest didn’t seem to think much of it.

The inscription should be Old Cybertronian, but Drift can’t read Old Cybertronian. There was nowhere to learn it anymore, and Drift has never been much of a reader anyway. He has a few memories of inscriptions he’s seen, which he mimics to the best of his ability onto the coffin; hopefully whoever sees it will know that someone cared enough to try, even if they couldn't quite get it right.

He didn’t actually know how Rodimus had wanted to be buried. For all that he had learned about Rodimus in their short time together, they’d never talked about that. Why would they? They saw death constantly, sure, but … who could imagine Rodimus without his bright colors? Who could ever seriously consider that death might come for _him_? 

He wonders if Rodimus himself ever really thought about it. As captain he’d presided over a short service after Rung had been lost in the first quantum engine malfunction, but there hadn’t been any corpse to gaze back at him. Had he wondered then about the people who might someday mourn him?

Maybe not. Rodimus’s ability to keep looking forward is part of what Drift was drawn to, after all. 

Rodimus probably trusted that there would be people who loved him enough to care about what happened to him and that’s what matters.

(He hopes that if Rodimus imagined it, he imagined Drift there. He hopes he would have wanted this, Drift washing his frame as it fades, Drift taking the casing from the engines, Drift preparing to lead his ceremony. He thought he had so much time to convince him, to become the one he could trust more than anyone.)

Rodimus probably wouldn’t really care about tradition all that much, Drift knows. But he wants to think of Rodimus as part of a lineage, someone with a place in history, even if it’s part of a community of believers through time rather than in the history of their society. If he couldn’t have a living legacy as a Prime, or as a captain, then at least let his coffin say he was part of something. It would have been true if he’d lived, surely.

Drift will send Rodimus to the Afterspark with care, with a token of who he was and who loved him, in hopes someone there will recognize and welcome him and keep him company until Drift arrives to tell him all the things he was able to accomplish in Rodimus’s name. It’s what he would want for himself, and that’s all he can give.

  


* * *

  


Hot Rod had spent his early years sleeping under friezes of the Knights, grateful for the enclosed space on cold nights. “I don’t know if ever I really believed in all of that,” he’d confessed to Drift, one night on the Trion when neither could recharge. “But there must have been a time when things worked better, or Nyon wouldn’t have been built in the first place. I mean, can you imagine anyone working together to build a city in our time? They’d be at each other’s throats before the first building was up.” He’d laughed once, blunt and dull. “‘Course, there’s nothing there now, is there?”

Maybe it was then that Drift had started to pay attention to the shade of people’s optics, even before he heard the teachings of spectralism. Hot Rod’s gaze was as bright as always, and yet it seemed different, wrong. Drift didn’t know yet about Nyon, not really, but something he’d seen in that light made him reach out on instinct.

“I trained in a place called Crystal City.” (He winces at this phrasing now when he remembers those days. True, and yet concealing so much. He’d been trying so hard to cultivate aloofness, as if everyone there wasn’t already well aware of what he was.) “They believed in the Knights there, too. They were trying to carry on their mission by creating a new city, one where things _worked_. One where they didn’t need to fight the war.”

Hot Rod had perked up at that. “Did it work?”

“... For a while.” _Until I happened to them_. “It made me realize how far we’d gotten from our original principles.” A beat. “_They_, I mean. The Decepticons. They were supposed to be creating a just world, once the unjust hierarchy was torn down, and here some neutrals had done it while nobody was looking.”

“Hey, Drift.” Hot Rod had tapped him on the forehead, too quick for any of the details of his touch to register no matter how often he replays it.

“Hm?”

“I get it, you know. You couldn’t follow someone who didn’t seem to understand that things were wrong. The Autobots didn’t have much to offer in the way of alternatives back then.”

“Is that the official Autobot position?” 

Hot Rod had laughed for real that time. “You’re a Wrecker now, pal. We’re where propaganda goes to die.” He’d looked over at Drift, eyes warmer. “You wanted to fix things. You didn’t know where it was going to end up.”

As if Drift hadn’t been on the front lines for everything that the Decepticons had become over the course of the war. He may not have chosen where the path went, but he had certainly walked it with fervor and devotion regardless of the collateral damage. But he couldn’t help preferring Hot Rod’s version of the story.

“Maybe it _was_ all real,” Hot Rod was back to musing on the Acropolex, idly stirring the energon in his cube. “The Knights and the Golden Age. The actual Matrix was down there the whole time and nobody had any idea. Kind of makes the rest of it seem more plausible.” He’d looked away and Drift felt colder for the absence of his attention. “Wish I knew what it was waiting for all that time. Optimus talked about it like it called to him. If it could do that, why’d it wait until Nyon was gone? If I’d - if _we’d_ had the Matrix, we could’ve…”

(_It will be you, it should have been you, _Drift tells the memory, but it doesn’t fix anything. He can’t answer the question.)

  


* * *

  


The teachings say: _The dead stay with us. Their voices resonate in our sparks, the light they give off travels on. Stars can be seen from across the galaxy thousands of years after they die, and we will be the same, so long as those we knew carry us with them._

_No-one who is loved is ever lost._

  


* * *

  


The actual ceremony isn’t what he wanted it to be. 

He insisted on being the one to lead it, as the last thing he could do for Rodimus. He’d wanted lights and sound, radiant joy and possibility, to try to convey what had been lost, what he’d known of Rodimus; a hothead, yes, but one who could never sit quietly when injustice was being done. Who always looked for something more he could do, and brought the same out in others.

(Whose eagerness to do the right thing was so easily manipulated that he’d agreed to conceal a threat to everyone aboard. Drift will tell them all soon, now that there’s no-one to keep a promise to. But let Rodimus rest first, at his best, before casting that shadow over his memory. He’d only wanted to help.)

But Rewind had hardly any footage of Rodimus, and what there was tended not to be terribly flattering. “It was going to be funny,” Rewind had said apologetically. “To contrast with what we accomplished in the final documentary.” Drift hears the implicit trust, that for as flashy and foolish as Rodimus could be of _course_ they would have succeeded in the end, succeeded at something, anyway, and can’t hold it against him.

And anyone else he wants to ask to help with the celebration looks at him with distrust, as if his turncoat nature had somehow brought this upon them. He believes it himself sometimes. Faithless, inconstant Drift. But he was sure he could have followed this vision to the end, and Rodimus too. He brought that belief out in people. Maybe not everyone on the ship yet, but he would have; his charisma shone into people, lighting them up, sooner or later.

(If only it had been sooner.)

Drift had bought the ceremonial cape on Cybertron before they left, just in case. As the quest went on, he’d hoped some of the crew would accept him as a spiritual counselor of sorts. A priest, even. He’d wanted to be prepared to officiate Acts of Transition if asked; as compelling as Rodimus’s resolve that none of their crew would die, he wanted to be ready to take responsibility for their care if they failed. He would accept that weight, share the emotions of those aboard, help them understand that the light does not end.

It wasn’t supposed to be for Rodimus. He never considered the possibility he’d outlive Rodimus.

It hits him all over again when he stands before the crew. He’d tried so hard to focus on positive emotions before this, hoping that he could still be a conduit for something good. But it doesn’t make _sense._

There should be colors for Rodimus. The red of heated metal, flexibility, openness to change, ever flowing. Yellow, fire, the light that makes all color visible, heating and changing those around him. Blue, a holy and chosen thing, the spark that we all share. The color Primus chose to remind us that we all carry the divine in us. 

Words aren’t the same. They always twist and turn when he needs to be able to rely on them.

A priest would have known what to say. A priest would have been able to stand in front of a crowd of glowing optics focused on him and not waver, even with the corpse of his lodestar, his captain, lying at his feet. A priest could be a steady, joyful beacon to help his people find peace, even in the darkest times.

A priest would have some gifts besides violence.

He tries to cover for himself by beckoning others up to speak first. A few share stories of Rodimus’s more dramatic escapades. Someone talks about his return with the Matrix, but it isn’t right, they didn’t _see_ him when he returned, glorious and purposeful and wise enough to know himself not ready. Not yet. They’d only heard about it. Even Rodimus himself had never told it right.

Drift looks out over them. Rodimus died for them and nobody tells that story. He wants to tell them how Rodimus had welcomed him as an Autobot, what he did to spare the people of Nyon suffering, the reason he charged into everything alone, without hesitation. He needs them to know that as soon as they set foot on this ship, they were loved. But he can’t make it into words, and they won’t understand it in colors.

There must be more Drift didn’t know, never had the chance to know. Where is the justice in that?

He can’t put off saying his part any longer, but everything he wrote the night before feels hollow and stagnant. Too much like something he would have written for Rodimus to speak aloud and pour color into, not something he could bring to life himself. As if Rodimus would have turned up at his door this morning like always, waving the practice sword Drift had given him, eager to get in a lesson before having to go off and do his solemn duty.

Instead he drops to one knee, head bent to hide whatever may have flashed across his face, and begins the last weld of the coffin. 

He can’t bring himself to close it all the way. It feels too much like locking Rodimus away from the light, keeping him trapped forever alone and cold. Drift isn’t _ready_. He leaves a little bit open, his secret. So that he won’t be alone.

When he’s done, he rises to his feet, hoping that at the last moment something glorious and appropriate will spring to his mind the way Rodimus had always inspired him. But he’s taken that to the Afterspark with him, it seems.

He gazes out across the silent crowd, resets his vocaliser, and whispers “No-one who is loved is ever lost.”

  


* * *

  


The teachings say: _We seek the light that allows us to see the colors around us. We seek the light that reflects the glow of each of our sparks. We seek the hum of engines, the shake of footsteps, the whirling of wheels and cogs and fans. These things are proof of life, proof that we are all filled with and part of the Wavelength._

The poem says: _You flare, you flicker, you fade._

(The teachings do not say: _We seek the circuit boosters because they help us to see colors brighter, to feel sounds deeper. We chase the high, so that we can feel these things even when they are no longer there. We seek the light pouring out of us. We seek more, harder, louder, brighter, because every time we come down the yawning emptiness at the center of life is clearer. We hope in the end only to fade quietly into the background hum instead of ending in a loud sharp shock like so many others we have loved. _

They don’t need to say; Drift knows.)

  


* * *

  


Drift stays on the Lost Light. 

Maybe it’s selfish. He’s not precisely _welcome_, but he’s tolerated, and there are fewer people here than on Cybertron who might call for his public deactivation before he can do enough to make up for Deadlock’s crimes. Besides, he doesn’t know where else to go. 

Finding Cyberutopia might have been enough to prove himself. It could still be. He keeps trying to find clues and Ultra Magnus politely accepts his messages and says he’ll take his suggestions under advisement. It’s hard to tell whether it changes anything. Maybe all he was ever meant to do was get the quest started; maybe Primus will guide them.

(Rodimus would have cared. Rodimus would have flashed him that smile, followed him to his quarters to hear all about it. Rodimus always made him feel warm, like all the mistakes he had made on the way were worth it.)

He’s not part of the command structure anymore anyway. He could probably have argued that he should become second in command, but without Rodimus vouching for him, there’s no way Ultra Magnus is willing to spend more time with him than strictly necessary. Whatever social capital he might have had been spent keeping him from being kicked off the ship. Ultra Magnus might have accepted that Drift was entitled to the promotion out of strict adherence to protocol, as he’d accepted his own promotion to acting captain despite obvious misgivings, but it would have been unpleasant for everyone. Drift most definitely included. He knew how to work with Rodimus, but he’s never been interested in command for its own sake. He knows how to overthrow leaders, not how to work with them.

They could have turned back to return Rodimus to Cybertron. It was a bit of a surprise that Ultra Magnus hadn’t taken it as an excuse to bring the quest to a swift end before any more tragedies. Drift is under no illusions that his arguments made a difference, but he’s glad all the same that Rodimus’s body is still here on the ship. His spark is in Primus’s hands now, suffused with the transcendent color of eternal joy; but even if Rodimus will never see his body again, it still deserves better than to be entombed in the Cybertron that had nothing to offer him when he was alive.

If - _when _they find Cyberutopia, Drift will find a place for Rodimus’s body there. Somewhere that Drift can watch over him in death the way he failed to in life, somewhere that he can become part of a better world at last. He deserves that.

(Most of his body. Part of him will forever be one with the quantum engine, touring the galaxy. It’s probably what he would have wanted, if he had to die. Drift is doing his best to feel happy for him, instead of aching for himself.)

If they find Cyberutopia. 

They have to, don’t they? There was the vision. He thought he knew Primus had something special in mind for Rodimus. He _believed_, and if there’s anything Drift has always been good at is belief. And yet, at the first hurdle, everything went wrong. Did Drift fail already? Or did Primus let them down?

(He can’t think that, can he? What is belief worth if he gives up at the first challenge? But something does feel different now, as if the divine presence that had seemed so immediate, just waiting for Drift and Rodimus and their gallant crew, has disappeared.)

Success had felt so certain with Rodimus at the helm that it’s still hard for Drift to imagine how anything can still happen without him. Time moves along, in the somewhat artificial way that time moves aboard a starship, and yet every time Drift snaps awake from recharge he has to talk himself through it all again.

It’s clear now that not many of the crew really care that much one way or the other. That had been a shock. It had seemed so necessary to Drift and Rodimus talking it over those dark nights on Cybertron; it was easy to forget that not everybody had the same fears and hopes. 

Rodimus would have proved them wrong. Everyone was welcome aboard the Lost Light, of course, believer or not, even if they just had nowhere else to go; Drift can certainly understand that. But he didn’t realize how many of the crew didn’t join for the vision they had offered. They joke about it, even, about the Knights and the Golden Age and, after enough time had passed, about Rodimus. After everything he’d done, after he died for them, they still didn’t understand.

(The crew. _Their_ crew. Drift believes, if it came to that, Rodimus would do it again; he had kept them safe. That’s what he wanted more than anything. They don’t _understand_ and Drift can’t seem to make them. It would be so easy to be angry at them, so satisfying, but the lack of faith wouldn't have stopped Rodimus from looking after them and Drift should do the same.)

Swerve still seems as enthusiastic as ever, but it’s hard to tell with Swerve sometimes. He knows that Swerve believes in Primus - more of a Primalist than a Spectralist, but Drift is no sectarian - with a cheerful optimism that stands out in a ship full of sarcastic pessimists. But it is also true that he loves quests and it’s hard to tell whether his love of _this_ quest is because he truly believes in it or because it was the most exciting thing going.

There’s nothing wrong with simply having a flock of waifs and strays. These are the people Drift wanted to find the Knights _for_, after all. Here is the spectrum of experience, waiting for a mirror and a light. But he finds himself wishing there was someone else who believed, so that he didn’t have to bear it all himself.

Meditating is a challenge for him now. When he tries to clear his mind, it fills again with his memories of Rodimus’s death. He tries to accept it as a sign as well. He watches it over and over, looking for some reason for hope. Some way that his vision could still come true. Why would Primus abandon his chosen? Was Drift’s guilt so great that Rodimus bore the consequences?

The vision couldn’t have been wrong, could it?

Rodimus wouldn’t have this problem. Rodimus would find something to do and do it, because somebody had to. Rodimus would keep moving, even if it was just to try to make up for what was already past. Rodimus wouldn't spend all his time stuck on questions he’d never be able to answer.

Drift can’t be Rodimus, though.

Brainstorm had come to his door the day after the funeral to invite him out to get a cube together. Drift had turned him down, unsure what to think; he’d never interacted with Brainstorm before, as far as he was aware. But he’d kept coming back, and eventually Drift had accepted, if only to remind himself how to speak. His own empty chambers had no answers.

Now Brainstorm comes to visit him every few days, coaxing him out to refuel or dragging him to his lab to hear about his latest experiment, which he even remembers to relate to the quest on occasion. Drift is pretty sure all these weapons of mass destruction aren’t doing his aura any favors, but it probably can’t get much worse.

“I lost someone too,” Brainstorm had told him out of the blue one day. He’d been looking out over the oil reservoir and Drift couldn’t read his eyes. “His name was Quark.”

“Oh no, we weren’t like that, Rodimus and I-” Drift answered too quickly, and Brainstorm had only looked at him.

“We weren’t either. Didn’t get the chance. Not sure he even knew, or wanted to. It doesn’t make it not count.”

Does the whole crew think that’s what this was about? Primus chose him to have the vision, that’s all. They were going to save everybody. Rodimus had been Matrix-touched; Drift was just lucky to have the opportunity to share his holy mission.

(To feel his warmth, to hear Rodimus call his name, to know and keep his secrets--)

It doesn’t matter now, anyway.

“It still feels like he’s out there, somehow,” he’d confided in Brainstorm another time. “Like it can’t possibly have gone so wrong, so fast. I mean, of _course _he is, we all echo, no-one who is loved is ever lost, but--”

“Oh, he is,” Brainstorm had replied, touching his briefcase like a talisman. Which was strange, in hindsight. Drift had never thought of him as particularly devout. “It’s okay. It’ll be better soon. I promise.”

He should return the favor and invite Brainstorm out next time. He hasn’t seen as much of him lately. Recently Brainstorm only asks him about whether he’s been to the basement lately, which of course he hasn’t; Ultra Magnus ended the Overlord project immediately upon taking command, and Drift hasn’t had any reason to go down there. It’s no longer his responsibility. But it seems to reassure Brainstorm when he says no, so he does.

It’s hard for him to completely shake the feeling that the search is doomed to failure. He had one role he had to play, to make sure Rodimus was ready for when he was needed, and he couldn’t. But if there’s one thing Drift knows how to do, it’s to keep going with something long after it has ceased being easy to believe it’s a good idea.

There are only a few times he dwells overlong on the thought that Ratchet probably has circuit boosters in the medbay. Only once or twice that he lets himself imagine that with them he might be able to hear and see and feel Rodimus again. He's not here anymore anyway. Only his cold gray frame, waiting. There's nothing left to hear but memories.

Maybe Ratchet would let him take them, once, so that he can be right about Drift. That no amount of second chances and guiding lights lifting him out of the crowd can make him good at something besides killing. 

(No, that isn’t fair. Ratchet had spoken up in favor of letting Drift stay, even after he’d revealed that he’d known about and helped with Overlord. Whatever he may say, Ratchet has continued to give him a chance. Just because he’s hard to read doesn’t mean Drift should force him into the role of his persecutor. Drift can play that role perfectly well for himself.)

When he feels that way, on the worst days, he locks himself in his quarters and imagines what might have been. Everyone they could have saved, the lost souls that the Lost Light would have been a beacon for. He visualizes finding the Knights, holy and triumphant and wise, but everything that would have come before, too. Rodimus triumphing against all kinds of monsters, Drift with swords in hand fighting by his side. Rodimus racing across distant plains, Drift laughing brightly right behind him with brightly-colored dust dancing in their wake. 

His heroic frame, the warmth that always poured off of it into Drift’s cold plating even at a distance. How much warmer it might have felt under the most finely tuned sensors in his fingertips. (He doesn't know, can never know now, but he believes. Faith means trusting in that which cannot be directly experienced; he wishes he didn’t have so much use for faith.) Tracing the place where the Matrix had sat, rebuilding Rodimus’s holy frame around itself, rekindling his spark with Primus’s own light. How bright, how holy, buzzing under his hands, exploring to find where the remnant Matrix-light is strongest, what makes Rodimus smile, the blue blue holy blue of his eyes--

(_If you hadn't believed, he would be safe_, laughs that memory of what was once his own voice. _You followed him, but he followed you, and it led him straight into the Afterspark_. _Are you still so sure you were right this time? Are you really so much better than me?_)

What other choice does he have?

Drift reaches out again for the light, and finds it only in his memories.

  


* * *

  


There was a time before he'd felt the holiness of the Matrix for himself, when he believed only in the transformational power of violence, and before that, when he'd only cared about escape. Make the time pass, travel the galaxy, whether on a warship or on the illusory senses of a high. It's all the same to your circuits. Hope that maybe this is the time that you don't have to come back. What is there worth coming back for?

(For a little while, he could have said: _For him, for our promises, for faith in helping create that better world_; but all that's turned out wrong too. He really thought he had it right this time.)

  


* * *

  


The teachings say: _We were all one once, and we must cherish each other ‘til all are one again_, but Drift doesn’t like to hear that one anymore.

  


* * *

  


The first thing Drift senses is the familiar purple. Before he hears the heavy footfall, before his visual processing circuits resolve the shapes into meaning, that particular shade triggers reflexes he thought were long in the past now. It’s something deeper than words or thoughts, a sharp punch of fear to the chest.

Purple, the color of old energon, long-since spilled and now curdled. The promise of vengeance, of fresher energon to come. Drift doesn’t know if Megatron had known about the spectralist implications when he’d chosen the color, or if the visceral shade had spoken for itself.

Tarn.

Drift had always known he might face the DJD someday, but the sharp fear that had been drilled into him over four million years had faded into the background. After enough time running, he thought maybe he’d finally escaped the DJD’s notice. Especially with the war being over. 

The Lost Light isn’t so far from Cybertron that the war can’t still find him, it seems.

It's a relief in a way when Tarn’s eyes lock onto his and flash with recognition. It’s not the dramatic moment that he’d been waiting for, neither a climactic last stand alongside his new allies nor a triumphant vindication of his visions, but finally, something _happening_. 

(_I knew it, no-one could take his place, I knew it was doomed without him--_)

He finally understands why Rodimus's story ended where it did. Primus must have always meant for them to be a tragedy. He hopes it was a noble one, at least, one that inspires people to succeed where they failed. Or at least one worthy of sympathy.

Let it be that. Otherwise it was all just things happening for no reason.

There’s fresh energon on Tarn’s claws already. This is no time to wonder whose it is, but Drift wonders anyway, processor whirling while his limbs are frozen.

Tarn’s even larger than in Drift’s nightmares aboard the Trion when he’d first joined the Autobots. He’d never met Tarn in the metal; Megatron kept the DJD apart, feeling the mystery made them more frightening. “Deadlock. What a pleasant surprise.”

It doesn’t matter. This is the last thing he can do. This is guilt catching up with him, his final reckoning. The future is short, but at least it’s gloriously clear. He’ll fight, and he’ll die, and maybe Ratchet will hold the quest together, or Brainstorm, or Swerve, or _someone_, even if they don’t believe.

“Tarn.” -- _please, please, Ratchet, get out of here, don’t make this worse than it needs to be -- “_It’s me you want.” 

He moves quickly, using all he learned from Wing plus the instinct of millions of years of survival, but it doesn’t matter. It’s over in a blur. Emotion corrupting his recording mechanisms again, perhaps. Tarn sends him flying into a wall, and when his senses come back online from the blow he can’t feel the Great Sword on his back anymore. 

He doesn’t know where Ratchet and Hound are. Hopefully they’ve gotten clear. He doesn’t seem able to turn his head to look for them.

Tarn looms over him, blocking out the light. His optics are sizzling in a way that reminds Drift of something, but he can’t remember what right now. It doesn’t matter. He’ll have plenty of time in the Afterspark for it to come to him.

All Drift ever wanted was to help make a better world. Primus will see that and grant him some mercy, won't he? Even though he never got it right?

(_See you soon, Rodimus_. _At least I’ll be able to apologize in person._)

One last chance to make a sound. One last projection onto the Wavelength. He opens his mouth, hearing more than feeling the sickening scrape of plating against plating.

“‘Til all are o--”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, Drift, they did not get clear. 
> 
> Drift has misunderstood a lot of things here, but he deserved to have some hope, even if it wasn't correct. I like to think that he actually does have some sensitivity to the supernatural and just makes a quite reasonable but incorrect guess as to why he no longer feels Primus's presence aboard the ship... The whole "is it a crush or does he think you're a saint (why not both)" aspect of this couple has always appealed to me and I can never get enough. You should take his view of Roddy with a grain of salt considering the whole grief and not having the opportunity to be disappointed by him thing.
> 
> I like to think even the other Brainstorm had good intentions, he had no reason to expect the DJD were going to show up off their tits on Nuke. And Drift mourning would move his plans forward in almost the same way Chromedome mourning had. Besides, can you imagine Brainstorm showing up at your door trying to make friends with you? He's probably great fun, but you'd always be a little worried what he was about to spring on you. Especially if you have Drift's hair trigger reflexes.
> 
> This is definitely the saddest ending I've ever done! I like to think that there is a happy ending in that there's another them who lived. And fucked everything up in a different, but not quite as bad, way. (Pipes may disagree that it's not quite as bad.)
> 
> I really don't want to fight about canon or anything, I just express my love for my faves by finding their deepest pain and poking at it until we all cry. I wanted to sit with this Drift for a little while as he tried to make sense of everything that had happened. It wasn't fair, but it never is.
> 
> Yell at me here or at sixty_cats on twitter, I love you like Rodimus loves every misfit weirdo asshole that sets foot on his ship


End file.
